After Suspicion - Rita Felski

I don't know what I was doing the first time I read this essay but I sure as heck wasn't reflecting on it or considering how or why it might be meaningful. Probably I reflected on how nice and short it was.

On second approach I found it similar in some ways to the Smith reading, but much less daunting in terms of both the scope and nature of the text and the scope of its proposition. What Felski is asking is, instead of a database of historical and cultural contingencies affecting the ascription of value, for theory to recognise and question 'how and why particular texts matter to us.' Her proposed approach of 'neophenomenology' (and did I have fun reading the Wikipedia article on phenomenology OR WHAT) seems like an interesting way to allow the  personal meaning of a text to enter into critical discussion. By acknowledging 'how structures of feeling and interpretative registers are modulated across space and time' (sorry, I'm obsessed), we may be able to move beyond suspicion and mistrust of the text to 'develop more compelling and comprehensive accounts of why texts matter to us.'

This, I think, is interesting. I've often found with literary theory that I'm not given any good reason why a text is important or valuable, and that although I almost always find that, to me, it IS important and valuable, the hows and whys of that value are inconsequential compared to the post-colonial or feminist or cultural reading I am supposed to be subjecting it to. These readings, as Felski says, do yield satisfying results of their own, but I'm also interested in the reasons why I was so utterly engrossed in What Maisie Knew when I know others found it tedious.

The difficulty with this approach seems to me to be the relevance such a reading might have, and its possible scope. For whose benefit would these readings be made? Really, the Smith article stopped short of detailing her changing personal response to the sonnets throughout her life not because it would be too long, but because it would be too boring. I'm interested in why people I know liked or didn't like certain texts, but generally that's because I care about them as people, not because their personal responses are particularly illuminating. But perhaps this issue is not so much about the relevance of a reflective reading so much as the potential for such a reading to remain superficial and formulaic, or to regress to high school level analysis ('Imagery creates images in the responder's mind, which makes them interested.' 'Rhetorical questions make readers question their own ideas'). The basis of phenomenology seems to be the study of how objects are perceived to all consciousnesses, which, as we saw in the Smith reading, would be an impossible way to approach literature. I'd like to read more about, and perhaps an example of, the approach Felski is proposing.